Love yer quote by Elanor! Where do I find stuff by this person, Fine?? Sounds like an interesting dude.

The quickest way to draw negative attention to one's scientific or medical work, no matter how valid or helpful, is to publish before you are entirely ready. Sometimes the most effective way to get the word out there is to just tell people. If everyone waited until they were published, we would not even know about greens being good for people. THAT did NOT come out of medical research, it came out of human beings using different things and telling each other about the results. The research only came afterward. In case there was any confusion, human experience IS just as valid as any scientific research. I am speaking as one person who science has not managed to invalidate with their fear-mongering. In other words, you don't need to have letters after your name to be capable of learning something. I wish the medical community would stop trying to invalidate patient observation as well. We are perfectly valid, and quite capable of making informed decisions in our own behalf.

Having just ordered an enterolab test, this thread is pretty interesting. Like some people, I stumbled on not eating gluten, one week, just stopped having diarrhea, which I had had on a daily basis for about 9 years, by process of elimination. It's been months and I'm still weaning off the opiates I was taking just to make it to work, and I was still sick on them. This is the first time in my adult life I have not had daily episodes of uncontrollable diarrhea. With codeine and lomotil and immodium there were controllable to an extent, but never quite good enough, today is the second day I've gone to work without taking any medicine.

That being said, first, disregarding the inaccuracy of the test... if they find antibodies, does that not mean, fairly definitively, that you have a reaction? Whether it be auto-immune or just immune means the severity and other effects will be different, but in the end, you just can't eat it or it will make you sick. Degrees of sickness will vary, and degrees of exposure, but all in all, the result is fairly similar.

Secondly, it's interesting to read some of the stories. I was dx'ed with IBS for a long period of time, like I said 9+ years, and just took opiates to slow motility, I never felt well, especially after the tolerance kicked in, it would still slow motility, but it feels less and less like the solution and more like a burden. I'm really interested in people's histories, celiac or no, especially those who have taken medicine like I have for so long. Ideally, I'd like to get re-scoped and have them specifically look very carefully for celiac disease, but the doc says that's 2 months of eating a lot of wheat, which I know from the last small amount of flour I had will mean going far back onto the opiates.

Lastly, and perhaps the most important point, when I first got sick, mercury fillings and candida were all the rage. A poster on another forum talked about getting all his fillings removing, having teeth pulled and partials put in. This was, excuse my language, f'ing insane to me. I don't want to get over my head in a debate about chemistry and the chemical reactions that happen with mercury in fillings, but the insanity to me was that I was sick as a dog and never had a filling at that point. Nearly identical symptoms and no fillings, but these people were convinced if they went to a specialty dentist and had their fillings pulled they would be cured. Maybe those dentists were frauds as well, maybe they weren't, I don't know those people's outcome.

As to the candida, someone suggested great smokies laboratories, who do stool tests similar to enterolab. So, I had that done, this was just a year or so after I initially got sick. So we are talking... 2000? Anyway, I took their test, came back fairly normal with some elevated yeast, so I went to several GIs, and they looked at me like I was the biggest sap in the world. A couple wouldn't even look at it. One glanced at it, handed it back and said it didn't mean anything. (side note : my theory is candida is probably a side effect of undigested food making it to the colon.) Anyway, I take pro-biotics still, they never cured me, but they do help somewhat, in my anecdotal experience.

But the real kicker is when I went to the GI last year, and I had done every damn exclusionary test for IBS that they can think of, got a scope but doc specifically mentioned he wasn't looking for celiac and only went X (some organ) far with it, so I'm not sure about the reliability of that, I believe he said a possibility because the diet was working so well, but maybe 50/50 or less. I also had a blood test about 7 years ago, but never saw results, just told it was neg, no idea what I was eating at the time, probably not much, I'd usually go 72 hours without eating, or just eating rice, in order to work a part time job, easier w/o food.

Anyway, so we went through all this, and he says, I don't really know, but have you tried great smokies laboratories?

So, to me, the moral is, the medical community has always been slow to adapt. 7 years from now, doctors might be sending tests out to enterolab... or at least suggesting it, when they are out of ideas. No one here can say that they won't.

If I read the study mommagoose put up correctly, they didn't find false positives, even if it was inaccurate. It might be nice for some, like me, to at least have a clue of what they might have and how to live with it. Even if enterolab just detects anti-bodies, it would be a comfort for me to know that I produce anti-bodies to gluten. For all I know, I have removed some other agent of distress from my diet, right now it seems like there could be a LOT of different things that make me sick. It would/will be nice IF I can tie them back to a source, and actually have that work.

I saw Rachel was posting a lot, I read a lot of her threads, and can sympathize, I saw her hopping from thing to thing, looking for any solution. I know how that is, you start to feel crazy, after doing that for all this time, and losing so much in the process and being in so much pain... sometimes you just want to know anything. If the test is flawed and gives false positives, then it's not really worth much. But I am willing to pay $99 when all else has failed. Someone said it several pages ago, the man has a product, people are willing to pay for it. Do I care if he has published his research? Not especially. If they find anti-bodies in me, then that is good enough for me. It is an answer I can live with.

A charlatan would take your money and offer nothing in return. I think enterolab's prices are reasonable, and I don't feel they have exaggerated their claims, at least not in my understanding of them. I don't need to eat wheat for several months and be in abject misery to be happy on a gluten free diet, I just want to see if there is at least some evidence pointing in that direction. And it's a dietary change, which seems fairly well supported by Michael Pollan's books (and other's research)... if it was yanking out all my teeth to get rid of the mercury, I might want something a little more conclusive.

Anyway, that's my two cents on the subject, feel free to correct me if I am misunderstanding mommagoose's link, or expectations of enterolab.

Ultimately, from everything I've read Dr. Fine's ideas really do resonate with me, it just makes sense. You eat food, it goes through the digestive process, waste is eliminated. That gluten reactivity could be observed in the stool is completely logical. What I did find a stretch to believe was the idea that it could be observed as long as a year after your last gluten meal. However, there may be an explanation to this that I've missed. I can't ignore the facts: If I eat gluten very much I get a whole cascade of symptoms that disappear when I eliminate gluten. Enough said.

Same here. I'm not sure about the long-term detection either, however, the only thing I can think of, is this is sort of how vaccine's work, if I'm not mistaken. Your immune system is exposed to a dead or weakened version of the invader, it then creates anti-bodies to fight it. That way, when you are exposed to the real thing, even years later, your body is poised to destroy it before it can do damage.

Again, not a scientist, just my guess about the logic behind this. If the test is sensitive enough, it could potentially find very miniscule amounts of anti-bodies. I don't know what methods they use, but the ELISA test for instance is incredibly sensitive, perhaps overly so for some things. But done right, it can detect tiny amounts of anti-bodies.

The former leader of our support group, a Naturopath, knows Dr. Fine personally. Dr. Fine has eaten dinner at his house. I asked him if he had ever spoken to Dr. Fine about why he has not published his results for peer review, he said yes. Well why not, was my next question? The answer to the question was....wait for it......"He just doesn't."

That does not inspire a great deal of confidence for me. Not that my opinion means anything, since I have never used Enterolab. But if people are making lifestyle and diet changes based on these test results, they are owed the courtesy of having had the methods and findings validated. That's good customer service.

I would imagine that the dietary changes are the validation in and of themselves, especially if there is improvement in health

I had a baby with multiple intolerances, not diagnosed by Dr Fine. My husband and I could not imagine how our baby had all these health issues that were found to be through food intolerances. Years after my child was born I was sick all the time...I suspected Gluten and contacted Enterolab, Not only was I Gluten Intolerant, but Dr Fine found me high in antibodies for all of the culprits my baby was intolerant of as well. I guess what he got in infancy I had all along, either dormant or triggered in adulthood. But I want to also say... I had learning disabilities and rashes all through my childhood....and I believe it was the Gluten (and maybe then some).

So when I look back (and maybe some others here would agree as well) ..even though I did not have full blown Celiac symptoms growing up...there was stuff smoldering under the surface...that I can only attribute to an underlying cause now.

I would imagine that the dietary changes are the validation in and of themselves, especially if there is improvement in health

I had a baby with multiple intolerances, not diagnosed by Dr Fine. My husband and I could not imagine how our baby had all these health issues that were found to be through food intolerances. Years after my child was born I was sick all the time...I suspected Gluten and contacted Enterolab, Not only was I Gluten Intolerant, but Dr Fine found me high in antibodies for all of the culprits my baby ws intolerant of as well. I guess what he got in infancy I had all along, either dormnt or triggered in adulthood. But I want to also say... I had learning disabilities and rashes all through my childhood....and I believe it was the Gluten (and maybe then some).

So when I look back (and maybe some others here would agree s well) ..even though I did not have full blown Celiac symptoms...there was stuff smoldering under the surface...that I can only attribute to an underlying cause now.

Just to let you know, the person you are responding to was on here over 3 years ago. You likely will not find most or any of these poster still active here.

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"Children in a family are like flowers in a bouquet: there's always one determined to face in an opposite direction from the way the arranger desires."~Marcelene Cox